I don't think we need to be ashamed of the result, we went to Anfield, we shot ahead with two excellently made goals. The players we had on the pitch are largely improving, Liverpool's are largely in decline. The result itself is an improvement on recent history.
This doesn't end our title challenge either—if you think that, then for you our challenge was already over. I was very much prepared to regard a point as a good result. When Liverpool equalised, I felt cheated by our feeble effort in the half to that point, but by the time the final whistle went, I was very glad we still had the draw.
The Xhaka incident and the crowd warming up in the last quarter hour of the first half was all very unsurprising, as was the skewed refereeing. It's not necessarily conscious corruption, it's cowardice.
However, I was pretty surprised by our total inability to control the match after the half. I wanted and expected us to slow things down, recycle the ball, use possession defensively, kill the mood, and I was very surprised we couldn't do it. In particular, we simply couldn't play out from the back—we were short on ideas and very error prone for a full 20–25 minutes after half time. That shouldn't be.
Later after the 70 minute mark, I would've loved to see Tierney on, as I'd been noticing Zinchenko didn't look up to it since half time. I didn't see White's issues so clearly, would have to re-watch the match, but when Salah started running at that left side of our defence time and again, it was obvious Zinny would not be up to it.
